It’s been 20 years since the first Google Doodle appeared on the company’s home page, and the web giant is marking the occasion with a walk down memory lane.
The first Doodle appeared in 1998, when Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin decided to spoof the traditional “out of office” sign by placing the Burning Man logo over the second “O” in the company’s corporate logo while the two were at the annual arts festival in the Nevada desert.
Since then, the idea of adding colorful graphics to Google’s logo to highlight notable people, events, holidays and anniversaries has taken off, spawning its own following among web users. They’ve celebrated Pac-Man’s anniversary, Copernicus’ birthday, Mother’s Day and the World Cup, as well as reminding us of lesser-known real-world heroes.
“When doodles were first created, nobody had anticipated how popular and integral they would become to the Google search experience,” a corporate history of the Doodle recalls. “Nowadays, many users excitedly anticipate the release of each new doodle and some even collect them.”
In the past two decades, the artists on the Doodle team have created thousands of Doodles for countries around the world. The Doodles themselves have evolved from the simple turkey clip art used in 1998’s Thanksgiving Day Doodle to include illustrated, animated and interactive-game variations of the company’s logo. Google even saw a VR Doodle nominated for an Emmy award.
